Founding Product Manager Location : San Francisco Company : Thorin Stage : Seed | Incubated at 8VC About Thorin Thorin is an applied AI company born out of 8VC's Build program, focused on redefining ...
Founding Product Manager Location : San Francisco Company : Thorin Stage : Seed | Incubated at 8VC About Thorin Thorin is an applied AI company born out of 8VC's Build program, focused on redefining ...
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New York, NY · Hybrid
$175K - $225K/yr
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The Founding Principal will spend one year planning and preparing for the launch of their new ... Actively engage in governance and board management by cultivating relationships, preparing ...
Quick apply
The Founding Principal will spend one year planning and preparing for the launch of their new ... Actively engage in governance and board management by cultivating relationships, preparing ...
About the Role A well-funded, Y Combinator-backed B2B SaaS startup in the AI-powered quote and order automation space is hiring its first Product Manager. This is a high-impact founding role where ...
New
Quick apply
About the Role A well-funded, Y Combinator-backed B2B SaaS startup in the AI-powered quote and order automation space is hiring its first Product Manager. This is a high-impact founding role where ...
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San Francisco, CA · On-site
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As the Founding Product Manager, you will own core parts of the product, partnering closely with engineering, design, and research to build a foundational product at the intersection of AI and ...
As the Founding Product Manager, you will own core parts of the product, partnering closely with engineering, design, and research to build a foundational product at the intersection of AI and ...
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Quick apply
As our Founding Product Manager, you'll sit at the center of the company and shape everything that comes next. You will design the foundational product for the future of private practice in the US.
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New York, NY · On-site
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New York, NY · On-site
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We're now hiring a Founding Onboarding Manager to join our Founding US team as part of our Customer Success function. Please note: This is a New York-based role, requiring 2-3 days per week either in ...
We're now hiring a Founding Onboarding Manager to join our Founding US team as part of our Customer Success function. Please note: This is a New York-based role, requiring 2-3 days per week either in ...
As the Founding Product Manager, you will own core parts of the product, partnering closely with engineering, design, research, and GTM to build a foundational product that drives decision-making ...
As the Founding Product Manager, you will own core parts of the product, partnering closely with engineering, design, research, and GTM to build a foundational product that drives decision-making ...
As the founding manager of this new team, you will be instrumental in guiding the team's technical investments, achieving product success, growing the team, and mentoring engineers. You will join the ...
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$120K - $160K/yr
You will work on the highest-priority problems in the company including managing key customer relationships, building out the founding team, and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. You're ...
Quick apply
Founding Operations
San Francisco, CA · On-site
$120K - $160K/yr
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... hit founding membership goals Capture, nurture, and close leads with urgency Recruit, hire, and developstudio staff Build a high-accountability, high-energy team culture Manage and own studio ...
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Founding Account Executive
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Source your own pipeline, run discovery calls, and help establish our initial CRM and RevOps processes. * Collaborate with a peer founding AE to trade learnings and accelerate our growth. Key ...
Quick apply
Founding Account Executive
$100K - $150K/yr
Source your own pipeline, run discovery calls, and help establish our initial CRM and RevOps processes. * Collaborate with a peer founding AE to trade learnings and accelerate our growth. Key ...
Founding Manager information
What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Founding Manager, and why are they important?
To thrive as a Founding Manager, you need strong leadership, strategic planning, and business development skills, often backed by entrepreneurial experience or a degree in business management. Familiarity with startup tools such as project management software (e.g., Asana, Trello), CRM platforms, and basic financial systems is highly beneficial. Exceptional communication, resilience, and adaptability are crucial soft skills for navigating uncertainty and motivating early teams. These qualities enable a Founding Manager to drive growth, build a cohesive team, and successfully launch and scale new ventures.
What are some unique challenges a Founding Manager might face when building an early-stage team?
As a Founding Manager, you’ll often be tasked with assembling a team from the ground up, which can be both exciting and challenging. One common hurdle is recruiting and retaining top talent with limited resources and minimal brand recognition. You’ll also need to wear multiple hats, balancing strategic planning with hands-on execution, while fostering a collaborative culture in a fast-paced, uncertain environment. Flexibility, resilience, and strong communication skills are crucial for navigating these challenges and setting the foundation for long-term success.
What is a Founding Manager?
A Founding Manager is one of the earliest leaders or executives in a startup or new company. They are responsible for helping to establish the organization’s vision, culture, and operational foundation. Their duties typically include overseeing daily operations, strategic planning, hiring initial team members, and driving early growth. Founding Managers often work closely with other founders to make critical decisions and set the direction for the company's future. Their role tends to be very hands-on and multifaceted, especially during the company's formative stages.
What is the difference between Founding Manager vs Project Manager?
| Aspect | Founding Manager | Project Manager |
|---|---|---|
| Credentials | Experience in startup leadership, business development | Project management certifications (PMP, CAPM), relevant industry experience |
| Work Environment | Startup or new business environment, high uncertainty | Corporate or organizational settings, structured projects |
| Employer & Industry Usage | Founders, startups, new business ventures | Companies across industries managing specific projects |
| Search & Comparison Intent | Understanding leadership roles in startups | Managing projects, timelines, and deliverables |
The Founding Manager typically leads new business initiatives, focusing on startup growth and strategic direction, often with entrepreneurial experience. In contrast, a Project Manager oversees specific projects within established organizations, ensuring timely delivery and resource management. While both roles require leadership and organizational skills, the Founding Manager operates in a more dynamic, uncertain environment, whereas the Project Manager works within structured project frameworks.
More about Founding Manager jobs
What cities are hiring for Founding Manager jobs? Cities with the most Founding Manager job openings:
What are the most commonly searched types of Founding jobs? The most popular types of Founding jobs are:
What states have the most Founding Manager jobs? States with the most job openings for Founding Manager jobs include:
What job categories do people searching Founding Manager jobs look for? The top searched job categories for Founding Manager jobs are:
Full-time
Posted 20 days ago
Job description
Title: Founding Product Manager
Location: San Francisco
Company: Thorin
Stage: Seed | Incubated at 8VC
About Thorin
Thorin is an applied AI company born out of 8VC's Build program, focused on redefining how work gets done inside modern organizations. We build proactive, long-horizon AI agents that continuously observe work across Slack, email, meetings, and documents-and take action so nothing falls through the cracks.
Unlike traditional AI tools that wait for prompts or rely on structured systems, Thorin creates a real-time digital twin of how a business actually operates, enabling automation, coordination, and insight over months and years. Backed by 8VC and built with product vision from Joe Lonsdale, Thorin is building foundational infrastructure for agentic, AI-powered productivity.
With backing and product vision from Joe Lonsdale, Thorin is 8VC's latest incubation, following the success of Affinity, Addepar, Saronic, and other unicorns.
About the Role
We're hiring a Founding Product Manager to help define Thorin's product from first principles. This is a core founding role, sitting at the intersection of AI systems, enterprise infrastructure, and real-world business operations.
You will own product direction end-to-end: shaping Thorin's primitives, deciding what the system should understand and automate, and ensuring that powerful agentic capabilities are exposed through products that enterprise leaders can trust, adopt, and scale.
This role is not only about backlog management. It's about deciding what Thorin should become.
What You'll Do
What You Bring
Bonus:
About the Team & Why Thorin
Location: San Francisco
Company: Thorin
Stage: Seed | Incubated at 8VC
About Thorin
Thorin is an applied AI company born out of 8VC's Build program, focused on redefining how work gets done inside modern organizations. We build proactive, long-horizon AI agents that continuously observe work across Slack, email, meetings, and documents-and take action so nothing falls through the cracks.
Unlike traditional AI tools that wait for prompts or rely on structured systems, Thorin creates a real-time digital twin of how a business actually operates, enabling automation, coordination, and insight over months and years. Backed by 8VC and built with product vision from Joe Lonsdale, Thorin is building foundational infrastructure for agentic, AI-powered productivity.
With backing and product vision from Joe Lonsdale, Thorin is 8VC's latest incubation, following the success of Affinity, Addepar, Saronic, and other unicorns.
About the Role
We're hiring a Founding Product Manager to help define Thorin's product from first principles. This is a core founding role, sitting at the intersection of AI systems, enterprise infrastructure, and real-world business operations.
You will own product direction end-to-end: shaping Thorin's primitives, deciding what the system should understand and automate, and ensuring that powerful agentic capabilities are exposed through products that enterprise leaders can trust, adopt, and scale.
This role is not only about backlog management. It's about deciding what Thorin should become.
What You'll Do
- Own Thorin's product vision and roadmap across visibility, process modeling, guardrails, and agentic execution
- Define the core abstractions of the Thorin platform - what a "process," "policy," "metric," and "agent" mean in a living enterprise system
- Partner deeply with AI Engineers to shape agent behavior, evaluation frameworks, reliability thresholds, and iteration loops
- Work hand-in-hand with Infrastructure leadership to ensure product decisions meet enterprise-grade security, compliance, and scalability requirements
- Collaborate with Product Engineers to design and ship intuitive user experiences on top of complex AI systems
- Lead customer discovery with design partners and early enterprise adopters, translating messy operational reality into clear product direction
What You Bring
- 5+ years of experience building and owning complex software products, ideally in enterprise, platform, or infrastructure-adjacent domains
- Proven ability to operate as a founding or early-stage PM, defining product direction in the absence of precedent
- Strong technical fluency - you can reason about AI systems, distributed infrastructure, and product tradeoffs without needing abstraction layers.
- CS degree strongly preferred
- Experience working closely with engineers on systems where reliability, trust, and correctness matter
- Exceptional product judgment - you can turn ambiguous, high-stakes problems into crisp product decisions
- Comfort with uncomfortable ambiguity - you enjoy operating without playbooks
- Clear, structured project management and communication skills - you can align engineers, customers, and leadership around a shared product vision
Bonus:
- Experience with AI-native, agentic, or automation-heavy products
- Familiarity with enterprise workflows
- Background in process modeling, operational analytics, or enterprise systems of record
- Prior experience selling or deploying products into large enterprises
About the Team & Why Thorin
- Work closely with a small, highly driven founding team, design partners, and directly with Joe Lonsdale, who remains deeply involved in product vision, strategy, and hiring
- Operate with high agency, rapid iteration, and direct customer exposure from day one
- Help define how a category-defining AI company goes to market from first principles
- Build with the backing of one of the strongest early-stage venture platforms in the industry
About 8VC
Sourced by ZipRecruiter
Industry
Investment clubs and venture capital companies
Company size
11 - 50 Employees
Headquarters location
Austin, TX, US
Year founded
2015